The Validity of Administering Large-Scale Content Assessments to English Language Learners: An Investigation From Three Perspectives

The findings and opinions expressed in this report do not reflect the positions or policies of the iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS First, we wish to acknowledge the Office of Educational Research and Improvement (OERI) * and the Office of Bilingual Education and Minority Languages Affairs (OBEMLA) in Washington, DC, for recognizing the need to investigate issues of validity in assessment with the K-12 English language learner populations in the United States and for supporting our efforts. David Sweet at OERI and Delia Pompa and Milagros Lanauze at OBEMLA made important contributions to the conceptual framework of this research. The work reported in this document would not have been possible without the support of colleagues in a number of educational venues. Each contributed in a special way to this effort. Our sincere appreciation to all. We extend a very special thank you to Heather Larson who provided incredible administrative support at every stage of our work. Her skill and efficiency facilitated our efforts in a major way, and we are grateful. We also wish to thank Steven Acosta and Fred Moss for producing earlier drafts of this report. Their formatting and word-processing skills, not to mention their patience, are acknowledged with appreciation. Finally, we thank Katharine Fry for sharing her editorial expertise whenever we asked and for preparing the final draft of this report. vii INTRODUCTION The research effort reported here addresses the important national need for determining the validity of large-scale content assessments in English with students who are in the process of acquiring English as a second language. Often these students have been excluded from such assessments, but there have been recent, growing efforts to include them. There is, however, considerable variability nationwide in the inclusion process. The focus of this report is on second language students—English language learners (ELLs)—who have been included in large-scale content assessments regardless of their language ability. Within the context of assuring equal educational access for all students, technical issues around validity are being examined from three perspectives. First, the potential impact of student background variables such as level of English proficiency and socioeconomic status (SES) on content-based assessment is examined through analyses of extant data from one large city school district (Site 1) and multiple school districts in one large state (Site 2); both sites have substantial ELL populations. Initial results from two other sites—Philadelphia and Hawaii—are reported in Abedi and Leon (1999) Next, a …